Tuesday, 1 February 2022

 

Viral Spain 1st February 2022.


Do you ever put things in 'safe places' ? I do not recommend it. Twice now I have put my banking details in safe places which I have never been able to find again! This last time I searched and searched. My safe places are too safe.

So now I have been through the rigmarole of setting up my internet banking yet again. I think call centre staff should be selected like the BBC used to select it's news readers, you know, nice clear voices, no beards nor regional accents, Queen's English. It seems to me the opposite policy is adopted with bank call centres. Rumour has it they are often in Asia so that would account for a preponderance of Asian accents! I had my secret weapon, new hearing devices, volume on high, but still I struggled to discern what my particular respondent was saying. My paranoia that I might get the process wrong or fail to record an important number/password/ code and its correct description accurately was not helping. I could tell she was getting a tiny bit impatient.

Maybe they should have 'old buffer' training as well as impeccable speech ? I waited patiently for my new coder and new code number to come in the post. I was told I would have to ring again and quite frankly I was dreading it! I opened the brown envelopes yesterday and found the code had expired on Friday! I will not repeat here what I said then. But....all was not lost, one could get a new code on the website! I went through the necessary steps, slowly and carefully with young, clever and computer literate wife on call. After ten minutes I found myself in on line banking! I was amazed and so relieved. No phone call, new code retrieved, wonderful. (Why do they send a code by post anyway?).

There was even another bonus. Sarah cannot access the savings account for reasons known only to bank people so we had not accessed it for a long time. The balance has grown over covid years, yes it is nearly two years now, and was three times what we were expecting!

So I have put all the papers, coders, numbers etc. away in an unsafe place. And I have put a note on the calendar to check our balances next week before I forget the unsafe place or how to do it.

Amazing I find all this. Only a few months ago I still felt like a young(ish) man. That is actually a huge exaggeration. I don't think I have felt young and competent in the face of internet banking since they invented it.

Anyway, to return to the concept of safe places. Last week, when looking for yet more codes, and user numbers, this time for making international transfers I was examining a very safe place, an old photo album when 350 euros fell out! So another happy ending to a safe place story.

Everything comes to he or she that stands and waits? Some of you will have read on my face book page that we both came down with nasty flu/cold type things ten days ago. And we tested positive for covid. It was miserable. It was not the mild post vaccination malaise we were expecting. I suspect that is just a feature of old covid, shiny new covid hits for six.

So stand back and avoid!



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